Friday, June 3, 2011

Surabhi

I happened to see an old video of a rare video of AR Rehman on a friend’s Facebook profile. When the video loaded it was a clip from the most loved TV show on Doordarshan, Surabhi. I remember every Sunday, 9pm! We would wrap up all our tasks before 9pm. My mother would hurriedly finish cooking, so we can lay down our dinner plates watching the show. Study schedule would be in order to not miss watching the show. An amazing, interesting show that appealed to all age groups! A show of general knowledge of our country. No other show was as diverse as Surabhi, digging through the diverse culture of India. It was a treat of Indian people, culture, traditions & history! A tour of India sitting at home! And the show hosts Siddharth Kak and Renuka Shahane, were perfect. Their faces are still fresh in my memory.

I still vividly remember the episodes of ancient locks! They would sometimes be part of the quiz section, where they would show us a really old antique lock system and the quiz would be to guess how to open the lock. The quiz section was really interesting.

Why don’t we have such original Indian shows anymore? Frankly, we never had the cable TV, until I was working in my first company at the age of 23! And I am glad we never had it. Doordarshan was doing well until all the channels flooded Indian TV entertainment. And right now there is hardly any creativity in Indian Television. All the shows that run are a copy of the American hit shows like who wants to be a millionaire, Dancing with the stars, Big Boss, American Idol etc … Why aren’t the Indian mass communication students doing pure Indian shows with Indian ideas?

Today’s kids are missing a show like Surabhi. How much of an over-dose do we want of saas-bahu serials; the exaggerated relationships? Normal people do not have such extreme dramatic lives!

I miss Surabhi! How is this to be communicated to the Indian TV board or whatever committee they are! Bring good informative shows than passing repetitive family shows!

On another note, they should probably release DVDs of the show so people can buy and learn from the past episodes. If we can invest in F.R.I.E.N.D.S DVDS, Surabhi is worth more! And Bharat-Ek Khoj too!